Zaikai Krieger, Representative to Silicon Valley, U.S. Department of State, Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation

Refugees are people who have been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war, or violence. In the last two and a half years, various conflicts and wars have led to the highest levels of forced migrations since World War 2. This refugee crisis has sparked fierce debates around the world on what should be done.Over the course of two full days, you will work with your classmates to build empathy with various stakeholders, such as Syrian refugees, people who are against refugee resettlement in the U.S., members of the diaspora of a refugee community, practitioners working with refugee resettlement organizations, and philanthropic funders of refugee resettlement.In this pop-up class, we will explore this topic from various design angles, with an emphasis on building empathy. You will explore how to design with empathy for different types of stakeholders within a system, how to design with empathy for people whose viewpoints you might strongly disagree with, and how to place an intervention within a larger system and decide who you are actually designing for.You will explore different ways to build empathy, including how you might thoughtfully approach situations where you cannot meet your users in-person, face-to-face, when there are security, legal, ethical, and/or logistical challenges.